The latest version allows you to attach external documents such as images, PDF files and other documents to transactions.

Based on feedback from the community, I have decided to add local storage support which means when you attach documents to your transactions they will be stored locally (if you are using desktop or server edition).

How it works

When you are viewing any transaction (e.g. quote, invoice, order, receipt, payment etc), the bottom-left corner will contain New Attachment... button.

You can click on the button to attach external files to your transaction(s).

Clicking on the name of attachment will open the file (e.g. PDF viewer). Clicking on x button will remove the attachment.

When using this feature, you will notice the list of transactions (e.g. list of purchase invoices) will indicate which transactions have attached documents. This is useful to make sure all your transactions have attached supporting documentation (where applicable).

@lubos How will this effect existing users of the desktop version which have already subscribed to the Amazon cloud storage for attachments? Will that be maintained as an option…?
I have about 150 attachments there already and are very happy with this solution. I hope I will not loose these and be forced to redo everything again…?
/AnBe

Thanks for implementing this, Lubos. I’ve been looking forward to this since starting to use Manager and it’s great to see what for me was the final big missing feature arrive!

If I could make one little suggestion though …

I’ve noticed when attaching documents, they get put into the same file system folder as the database file. This is fine, but the original file name is lost, replaced with a seemingly random string of numbers and letters. This makes it impossible to identify what the files are outside of Manager itself.

Although obviously accessing files directly should be discouraged due to the risk of breaking links if something is deleted or renamed, I think it would be beneficial to maintain some means of identifying files within the file system itself. Even if the original file name isn’t maintained (not least because of the risk of duplicates), it would be good if Manager could assign a logical name to the attachment and maintain its extension.

So, when attaching a receipt to a purchase invoice for example, naming it something along the lines of PI_20161024_Supplier_abc123.pdf (where 20161024 is the date, abc123 is a random string of numbers/letters for uniqueness). Similarly, an attachment to a sales invoice could read SI_20161024_Customer_abc123.pdf, a quote SQ_20161024_Customer_abc123.pdf et cetera.

Looking further ahead, will it be possible to run reports based around attachments? I’d like to be able to run something to show all purchase invoices and expense claims that have missing attachments. Also, a report of sales invoices by customer where attachments are missing. I’d presume custom reports could fulfil this if nothing else, in which case is there an up-to-date database schema that I can use to create these reports?

Other than that though, this is great. Thanks again for implementing it.

@lubos Thank you for implementing the local storage. I look forward to trying this out over Christmas! I agree with @BGPS that the attachments storage needs a more logical storage arrangement. What I would recommend is that there is a folder called attachments within the Manager folder where the data files are stored and this will separate the Manager file, the company data file and the user preferences file (the program) from the attachments. Then as BGPS said, some way of identifying the files outside of the program would be useful if for no other reason than for troubleshooting problems with either Manager or attachments in the future. I like his naming format as its logical and makes sense.

This is absolutely awesome! Thank you so much, @lubos. You’re improving every day a great product with so much potential, just so you know. I’ve been recommending your software to various of my clients and also want to switch our office to Manager. We’re still making tests to make a decision for the server edition. Thank you so much, again. Beers for you. Cheers!

Your data files are kept in a separate folder from the program files - so they wont get over written.
Before doing any download, do a backup which should be stored in a different location. In the download you have the option of Run or Save, if you select Save then It is suggested that you use “RUN” to execute the program, don’t double click the .exe file as you may end up having duplicate Manager programs running

@lubos can you add this topic to the releases category and can you also set the releases category to sort by date of topic creation rather than last post to make it easier to see what the latest releases are. Thanks